Skip to main content

I'm An Ice Cream Baby

Everything starts with ice cream.
Behind-the-counter
Chubby brown-eyed baby
Bringing in the college campus customers
The biggest baby flirt you ever saw.
Bathed in deep metal sinks in the back
Young dad running the store with the baby
Young mom still in school
Learning to teach little older kids.
I was an only child for
Five whole years
The only baby of three from
The Upside-Down Penguin Ice-Cream Shop.

I swear to this day
Mint-chocolate chip ice cream
Runs in my veins with the blood.

Everything starts with ice cream
From meeting Jessica Queeney at three
(One old picture still left
Of two smiling babies)
To Coldstone cake-batter Reese’s pieces
With a bunch of ‘pirate’ friends
Tricia’s digital camera
Storing every moment
Of our scandalous sugary wickedness.

Everything starts with ice-cream
First date with this cute boy
(I met him where I work at Wendy’s
He ordered a side salad and a Frosty)
Johnny Rocket’s corner-table
Possibly gay? waiter
He orders an iced tea
With three sugar packets
But I got a milk shake.

Three months later
After-dark Thursday night
At our local in-the-ghetto Dairy Queen
First serious wonderful boyfriend
Talking and slurping and frustrated
Over dipped-in-butterscotch vanilla
(Dad’s favorite I’m adopting)
And vanilla chocolate swirl
Melting down the paper-covered cone.


Everything wonderful starts with ice cream.

I have a confession...I love to write poetry, so this really was not much of a challenge, but this was fun. It was like playing connect-the-dots around memories with ice cream in my life. Typically, my oral ice cream history is shorter than this: "I grew up in an ice cream shop and the obligatory tag line is that's why I'm so sweet." Ha ha. :) I actually said that to my now-boyfriend, the guy I mention in here. It's funny how ice cream honestly were the dots, huh?

Comments

Deb said…
I love the phrase "our scandalous sugary wickedness" (and everything else about this piece too).

Popular posts from this blog

I Watch You Smile - You Steal the Show

Anyone ever see "Mean Girls" with Lindsey Lohan? When she was pissed off, she suffered from a symptom she dubbed "word vomit". Hers was the result of her convulsing anger, but I have a different word vomit. Mine is basically the result of my vocabulary and emotions upchucking at the same time. I'm not quite sure what to tell you guys; what's appropriate to say, what you don't need to know, what's too much to tell you. This is probably gonna be a pretty long entry, which might scare you off, but after hearing my unusally discouraging tones I have no doubt that many of you are now riveted. I guess...you guys love me and want to know me, and for some, this is the only way you keep up with me. I'll figure out the limit as I go, I guess. I had a very good talk with my momma today, which is a good sign for our relationship. It was violently and starkly splintered for quite a while, but it has progressed in leaps and bounds lately as I've better und...

The First Stages

2 days ago I had a coffee date with the girl "in charge" of the house I'll be moving into this Sunday. Snuggled down in a sweatshirt over a white chocolate mocha during a drizzly afternoon we went over last minute details to make sure she and I were on the same page. As we wrapped everything up, she told me to wait and dashed to the car; coming back in with a polka dot gift bag I had only eyes for what lay behind the curled red ribbon tying the two handles together: two shiny silver keys. Inside the bag was a beautiful red journal and a heap of candy from all the girls to welcome me into the house, but I couldn't get over the feel of those keys in my hand with fresh cut grooves. I marveled at the sight of them threaded onto my keychain as Sarah Brasse's eyes danced from across the table. I looked up, feeling the warmth of the mocha spread from my abdomen to my fingers and toes and the ends of my hair. "It's real, isn't it?" I said. "It's...

Shipwrecked

I always seem to come back here, to this place of writing and sharing.  It feels like a boulder on the shore - I may wash away in the tide for a while, but somehow I always end up washed back here. It's now been nearly twelve years since my first post here.  I was 18 when I started this blog for my Freshman English class; two months from now, I'll be 30 and freshly divorced. There is much, of course, that I cannot and will not write about that last detail; I am not here to tattle or list grievances.  Here is the short story: we were together for nearly 12 years, and now we are working on paperwork for our dissolution.  No, there was no infidelity on either side.  And no, I was the one who initiated both the separation and the dissolution.  Yes, it was - and is - very painful.  And yes, I do hope he quickly finds happiness after we part ways, even if it sounds trite. And here I am, back here on this seaside boulder, washed ashore like a ...